This is the play gym that we built for our birds for approximately $20 dollars. It is made of 1/2″ pvc, wrapped in coban in bright colors (self adhesive bandage used in doctors office). Coban is very expensive at the pharmacy and it’s hard to find the bright colors. At the pharmacy we payed almost 4 dollars for 5 yards per roll. I found colorful coban on amazon for approximately $1.67 a roll. It came with ten rolls. At the time, this was wrapped in flesh colored coban. I’ve since rewrapped it in purple, dark blue, light blue, bright pink, and lime green which has made it much more appealing. Birds do see in color and are attracted to bright colors. And the coban will need to be replaced often, as it gets droppings on it. The rope we had cut for us at home depot. It feels like plastic (not sure what it is made of) and it’s really easy to wipe clean. We found the design for this play gym on YouTube, and modified it some. We added the swing and a couple of other features.
Toys for birds are not a luxury, but a necessity. It’s imperative that we keep their minds busy. Boredom is not a good thing for a parrot to experience. Parrot species are extremely intelligent, and pretty much need to be entertained at all times. If your bird is bored and lonely, she may scream for attention. Your bird thrives on interaction with the ‘flock,’ and her flock is you! Having lots of toys to keep the bird busy is a must. I’ve found that buying a few new toys every week and rotating them regularly so that they don’t get bored with the same toys has worked well. Since we will be moving our parakeets back into our son’s room, we’ve decided to build a separate one for them. After five months, we were finally able to coax our parakeets out of their cage and now i’m really reluctant to put them back in the cage. Afterall, they think they are living in a mansion now! They just moved right into the cockatiel cage and have made themselves at home. They are so much more active and playful. They just seem so much more content! But this time, I think I will try a hanging play gym made from natural wood that hasn’t been treated with pesticide. I’ve seen some amazing ones, and screwing toys into the wood seems like it will be a bit easier. For now we have to use panduit straps to hang the toys on the play gym, and whenever I need to take the toys down to clean them I have to cut the straps. And they are slightly expensive. Anyway, I just wanted to share the ways that we’ve found to keep our birds entertained (which really requires a lot of imagination). I’ll post the youtube video that we went by. Like I said, we got the general idea from this video, but modified it quite a bit. Thanks for reading!
On her video, she has posted another link to another video that gives exact measurements. It took me awhile to figure this out!
cockatielcentral 